Murphy - part 2
28 Apr 2017Da5id Weatherwax
Where was I... Oh yeah. The story of how I ended up stuck here waiting on a replacement for Noodle's number 2 main after a rookie mechanic had wrecked the one he was supposed to do a simple tune up on.Like most in the Pilot's Federation, I'd learned early on to be an obsessive news-junkie. To make more than the barest margin out here you had to be a better pundit than all the talking heads on GalNet. If you waited for them to pick up on a trend, by the time you heard about it some other pilot had worked it out for himself and waltzed off with all the cream of the profits. It's the little things you pick up on, like when the station faxes suddenly stop talking about a "boom" when it clearly isn't over - or worse yet, start frantically talking it up when anyone actually in the market can see it's already tapering off. You couldn't really blame them. Most of the regular population of these stations lived out their entire lives here, stuck in what's basically a big duralloy can surrounded by horrible ways to die. More than ninety percent of them never owned anything that could fly beyond a little runabout that couldn't even deorbit or make it to anywhere that wasn't circling the same world the station did. Me, I thought those things were death-traps, but then I was a pilot, and you could fit half a dozen of those little runabouts in the cargo bay of even a stock sidey. We used to call them "Remlocks with engines." What this basically meant was that for just about every station in known space, the population had nowhere to go if the shit hit the fan. Unsurprising that the faxes slanted the news a bit to keep the population calm. Being stuck in that same duralloy can with a population going collectively nuts and panicking was enough to make any station manager wet himself. Did I mention all the horrible ways to die out here? Yeah. Thought I had. Amazing how many station managers dealing with stationer riots had "retired" due to "incidents" in the machine spaces or "airlock accidents." The faction bosses would wring their hands and issue statements full of words like "unfortunate" or "regrettable" but for the most part they weren't particularly forgiving when it came to a subordinate screwing up, making them look bad and costing them the kind of gigacredits a full-on station riot and the resulting damage can involve, so even if the manager made it through the chaos he'd be booking passage with somebody like me. Always to the same destination too. I've never been there but this station called "As far away as possible" must be one hell of a vacation spot.
For me, it started in the pilot's bar. I noticed it half way down my first beer of the evening, thought about it all the way through the second and then took my third off to a booth in the corner where I pulled out my datapad. Any observer would have thought I was planning my next run like half a dozen other guys doing the same thing at their own tables. If station ops had tracked my queries, they'd have thought so too. I was scanning the newsfaxes, checking out the departures and arrivals logs, checking manifests of the ships in and out. Sure enough, the relative scarcity of high-ranking shoulder-flashes in the bar was matched by the steady departure of the bigger and more expensive ships over the past couple of days. On its own, that wouldn't have meant anything. It was only when you looked at the manifests it started to smell bad. Way too many of those high-ranking pilots had shipped out with low value cargo. Stuff they'd make only a few dozen credits per can on. Looking at the ships that were carrying them, I'd bet that a couple weren't even going to cover their fuel costs and would have to rely on their scoops to salvage any profit at all on the run they were making. What it added up to was that the best-connected and most well-heeled pilots wanted to not be here. I had a few connections of my own at this port and a few "social calls" over the comnet only served to make my antennae twitch even worse. Pretty much the only top sticks left at this station were the kind of sleepy-eyed guys who never flew anything with cargo racks. The folks who made their living off combat bonds or way out in the black making sure that the folks paying for a particular mark to disappear without trace got their money's worth. Pretty much all my contacts gave me the same picture too, they were all stockpiling, digging holes and climbing into them ready to pull the lid down at a few seconds notice.
And I was stuck at dock for at least two more days. Longer if it all popped before the hauler bringing in my new engine made the station. I left my third beer unfinished, dropped a few credit chips on the bar for a tip and headed for the maintenance bay.
"Dock access. Commander Weatherwax. Access to ship's stores, Python Delta Whiskey Alpha Zero Three, Danger Noodle"
Voice ID confirmed. Please remember to sign out when you leave, Commander.
I'd never worked out why everyone gave their computers these almost sultry female voices. I suppose it's all because of the bullshit machismo the vids tend to give us pilots but there's enough ladies flying these buckets you'd think they'd throw them a few crumbs too. Terri told me once that she'd found somewhere where the computer was this deep soft male voice with an accent from one of the francophone colonies and she'd come back to trade there for a month just for the refreshing change. The thought of that evening with a dozen of us just blowing credits on a good time was enough to give me a smile until I made it through the hatch onto the Noodle's bridge. After that it was all business and no laughing matter.
I slapped my palm on the portside locker and my suit detected the scan and obediently went biotransparent. The lock catalogued my fingerprints, the pore pattern on my palm, my DNA profile and confirmed that I was both alive and conscious before it popped the door. I pulled it wider and contemplated my weapons locker, everything inside it securely stowed against high-G maneuvering and secured to the racks by the molecular-encoded customs seals. There were quite a few items in here that would be illegal on just about any station but provided customs read the same molecular tag on the seals before my departure as they'd recorded putting 'em on when I docked, none of them had ever been "officially" imported to this station and as far as the local authorities were concerned they didn't exist. Some of them were legal here though. I snapped the seals on two. My favorite sidearm, a high-aperture plasma thrower, and a little stunner that worked pretty well as a backup piece. When I pulled the holsters from the shelf I also grabbed a blade, tucking it onto the sheath in my right boot. The stunner holster went into its pocket on the left of my flight suit, the bigger one for the plasma thrower onto my belt at the right and I snapped its lower end to the adhesion patches on my right thigh. I dropped a handful of chargepaks into my pocket and slid one into the butt of each weapon, checking that each was at full charge before setting the safeties and holstering them both.
I'm not much of a guy for praying. Most of the time out here by the time you start relying on Gods to save you it's too late and you're able to present your request for salvation in person. Nonetheless, as I closed up the locker I stared up at the deckhead.
"Keep the lid on for two more days so I can get out of here!" What the heck. If there's any help to be had, a little extra can't hurt, right?
As I checked out of the maintenance bay, I was quietly laying bets as to how long it would take...
"Hold it, Spacer!"
Three minutes. Not bad. Keeping my hands in view (like that would have made any difference if it dropped in the pot. Trying to hide my hands would have just made it take longer to draw and shoot, but making them "obviously visible" seemed to make folks relax some) I turned around and saw a station rentacop. The kind that was always fun to mess with, all badge and no balls. He was going to get off lightly this evening.
"Can I help you, Officer?"
"You can't be carrying that here."
"It's certified bulkhead-safe and if you scan my identichip I think you'll find all the paperwork in order. If there's any irregularity I'd be happy to step down to the security office and take care of it."
The stupid bastard hadn't even considered that I might have a valid permit. His ID scanner was still in its case on his belt and he had to fumble for it. He almost wilted as he scanned the screen.
"No, it's perfectly in order, Commander. I do apologize for the inconvenience, it's just with the..."
"Shush, before you say something your sergeant would prefer you didn't talk about in public, ok?"
That was a guess, but it was a good one. When he promptly closed his yap, without realizing it, he'd just given me all the confirmation I needed that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. (Amazing how literary references persist far beyond their time. I knew that "Denmark" was an old-Earth nation. pre-starflight. One of the Scandic places that got glassed in, I think, the fourth or fifth planetary war. The phrase about it rotting was even older than that but we all knew what it meant even if we didn't know the history. "Where I am standing, right now, is about to all go to shit and there's fuck-all I can do about it." )
The rentacop was babbling, something about how I should openly wear a faction tag if I didn't want to be challenged for going armed. Yeah, right. That's called a "target" in the Pilot's Federation, buddy. I stared him down until he ran out of voice and watched him amble away and then resumed my course back to my hotel. Being allied to the local faction does have its perks sometimes. That was why I made sure that everywhere I landed liked me, even if they hated each other.
"That won't be much good when the new order takes over, flyboy..."
Half a dozen street punks. No big deal. Only problem (for them) was that I'd much rather have messed with the rentacop but now these guys had stepped up and volunteered to let me ease those frustrations.
"The new order will pay me the same for everything I haul into here, they'll sell me the same stuff if they offer a good enough price. They'll like me just as much as the current boss does."
"Maybe we'll have done something about it before then, huh?"
Jackpot. This was going to be fun.
"Nah. That's not gonna happen. I dunno if you're smart enough to get that but I don't care. The only two things you can 'do about it' are to fuck off or end up as a grease spot on the deck. Choose wisely."
The guy at the front actually had enough balls to step forward and make like he was going to charge me. I snaked the plasma gun off my hip and he froze as he stared down the muzzle, seeing what must have looked like a black hole waiting to suck him in.
"It's set to spread shot, and none of you are armored. One of you tries anything, all of you melt together. You think your mothers will be happy burying a baggie?" The front guy was still staring but his buddies took off like jackrabbits. I snapped a kick into his kneecap and he folded as it went to an angle that knees aint supposed to have with a nasty wet popping noise.
"Don't fuck with the Pilot's Federation, punk...."
(to be continued)